Posted by Ben Curran on April 10, 2018 at 04:02:43:
In Reply to: Re: The word posted by Heartless on April 03, 2018 at 21:25:27:
Dear 'Heartless',
Your request for complete clarity about who exactly these angels are in the present world seems to me to be a very big ask. My impression
is that the Book of Revelation is actually designed to be obscure. (We could have a whole conversation about why that should be the
case). Perhaps you have your own ideas as to who these people could be?
Dr Janson's interpretation of Revelation is the best that I have ever come across. Her explanation of who and what the 'Beast from the
Sea' and 'The Beast from the Earth' are gave me a real 'dawning-of-the-light' moment when I first read them. But I suspect that the
section on the bowls and the vials are never going to be crystal clear to us.
But there is another small book that has been of enormous service to me in clarifying and simplifying most of the great teachings of the
New Testament. It is HEAVEN IS FOR REAL by Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent (Thomas Nelson, ISBN 978-1-4041-7542-6 (TBN)). This book has
detailed comment on only one theme in Revelation; it ignores the rest. That comment is in the chapter headed 'The Coming War' and the
following is an extract:
QUOTE: Colton said "Dad, did you know there is going to be a war?"
"What do you mean?" Were we still on the heaven topic? I wasn't sure.
"There's going to be a war and its going to destroy this world. Jesus and the angels and the good people are going to fight against Satan
and the monsters and the bad people. I saw it."
I thought of the battle described in the Book of Revelation and my heart stepped up a notch. "How did you see that?"
"In heaven the women and the children got to stand back and watch. So I stood back and watched." Strangely, his voice was sort of
cheerful, as though he was talking about a good movie he had seen. "But the men, they had to fight. And Dad, I watched you. You have to
fight too."
Try hearing that and staying on the road. Suddenly the sound of tyres whirring on asphalt seemed unnaturally loud, a high whine.
And here was this issue of 'heaven time' again. Before, Colton had talked about my past and he had seen 'dead' people in the present.
Now he was saying that in the midst of all that he had also been shown the future.
But I had another, more pressing concern. "You said we're fighting monsters?"
"Yeah" Colton said happily. "Like dragons and stuff."
I'm not one of those preachers who camps out on end-times prophecy, but I now remembered a particularly vivid section of Revelation:
"In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die and death will flee from them. The shape of the
locusts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of
men. They had hair like women's hair, and their teeth were like lion's teeth. And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and
the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots with many horses running into battle. They had tails like scorpions, and there
were stings in their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months."
For centuries, theologians have mined these kind of passages for symbolism: maybe the combination of all those different body parts stood
for some kind of country, or each one stood for a kingdom of some sort. Others have suggested that breastplates of iron indicate some
kind of modern military machine that John had no reference point to describe.
But maybe we sophisticated grown-ups have made things more complicated than they are. Maybe we are too educated, too 'smart', to name
these creatures in the simple language of a child: monsters.
UNQUOTE.